Creativity is key for ?museum CEO

As the CEO of Sausalito's Bay Area Discovery Museum, creativity plays a central role in Karyn Flynn's daily operations.

'Creativity is the skillset I use most every day,' she said. 'There's never one right answer for the complexity of my job, from finding answers to problems to finding financial solutions.'

Flynn believes that adults, who may have lost some creativity along the way, can be taught to be more creative.

'We all have the potential to be creative,' said Flynn, who will be the keynote speaker at the June 24 Women in Business Awards Gala. 'The key is to practice it, like we practice sports.'

Flynn will speak about the journey that led to her role at the museum, and a new program being developed there, on the seven components of creativity.

At Bay Area Discovery Museum, children of all ages get turned on by art and science activities. There is piecing together giant, different-shaped blue foam blocks on the imagination playground, or learning about the habitat under the Golden Gate Bridge in the Wave Workshop. Kids can walk through an underwater tunnel, or try on fish or bumble bee costumes. Art studios allow children to paint on special walls, play on a tactile table, create take-home projects and participate in large, collaborative creations.

With each activity, the purpose is to teach children to love the process rather than the final product.

For Flynn, the more she learned about how children develop from birth to age 8 — and how important those years are — the more passionate she became.

'There's no greater investment you can make than within that timeframe,' she said. 'Every day, I ask myself what I can do that day to bring the mission forward, how do I help advance that work. I love what I do. How lucky am I that this is what I get to do?'

Flynn studied history and cultural anthropology at University of California, Santa Barbara, and earned her MBA at London Business School. The Kentfield resident previously worked for Goldman Sachs in private wealth management. She has also served as a trustee for Heyday Books in Berkeley and is on the board of the Mountain Play and Marin Advocates for Children. She has three sons, 7, 10 and 12.

After five years serving on the museum's board, Flynn was named CEO in 2011.

One of the elements to being a successful leader, Flynn believes, is not being afraid to take risks.

'Definitely do not be afraid to take risks — and speak up,' she said. 'You don't have to be 100 percent sure you're right. The thought process is just as important as a right answer.'

Flynn also said she strives to be a good listener and she said she tries to synthesize information and turn it into actual steps to execute. She also said it is important to be a good team-builder. When one of her employees left the organization recently, she told Flynn she was the best boss she ever had.

'And that was the biggest compliment,' she said. 'My success comes from their success.'

With more than 300,000 people visiting annually, the future vision for the museum is to impact 1 million children a year both on site and in the community.

Because the museum operates as a nonprofit and runs 'very lean,' Flynn said creativity plays a big role in fundraising. The board has been creatively rethinking traditional fundraising events to make them more relevant to the community, more mission-aligned and more appealing to a wider group of supporters.

'We moved away from the tried-and-true formats that felt tired and focused on formats that played to what our audiences wanted: more opportunities to come together at the museum as a family, like at the Goblin Jamboree, new for this year Snow Days, and our new family gala next spring,' Flynn said. 'When catering to (just) adults, we know they want to have a good time and have an opportunity to socialize with their friends, which meant an overhaul of our traditional spring gala to be less formal. We also have invested more in our signature thought leadership luncheon, where we bring the biggest names in creativity, innovation and learning to the Bay Area.'